Jacinta Vlach/Liberation Dance Theater @ Jacob's Pillow, 8/5/09

BECKET, Mass. – The dancer, choreographer and activist Jacinta Vlach moves as if the passion of her convictions was an animating force. It travels through her like an electric current, expressing itself in all sorts of ways—in sudden, odd hand gestures, slicing kicks, shoulder rolls, funky hip-hop moves. The sum total is a post-postmodern, very 21st-century vocabulary, raw and sophisticated at once, that epitomizes both fusion and individuality.

Vlach and her San Francisco-based company, Liberation Dance Theater, are on stage in the Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow through Sunday.

Their program includes two works from Vlach’s socially conscious, politically aware oeuvre, beginning with “Animal Farm,” (2008), based on the George Orwell anti-Communist allegory. Rather than retelling the story, the dancers embody the emotional essence of the characters’ struggles and triumphs, while a video backdrop of text and revolutionary poster art provides an abstract narrative. As images of power struggles around the globe and through the ages flash onscreen, a hard-driving yet often hypnotically repetitive score, from Abdullah Ibrahim and Cinematic Orchestra, emphasizes the sense of history constantly repeating itself.

The six dancers, of varying sizes and builds, are endlessly interesting to watch; each seems to exist in his or her own personal spotlight that illuminates their distinctive styles. Raissa Simpson is compact and light as air, Takeo Wong, grounded and loose-limbed. Jetta Martin has a delicate, leggy grace, while Amara Tabor-Smith projects incredible strength and clarity. Vlach and Rashad Pridgen (in the roles of pigs-in-charge Snowball and Napoleon), possess elastic fluidity and uber-cool personas. As the farm’s leader, Pridgen exudes the confidence and power of the classic charismatic despot; it’s only at the end of the work that he allows us a glimpse of his humanity and self-doubt, as he crumples, covering his eyes, ears and mouth in turn, his whole body crying out, “What have I done?”

“Abjection in America,” from 2007, opens with a monologue by John Leguizamo on being a Fresh Air kid, and the choreography in this section, much of it inspired by traditional African and Latin forms and set to music by Tito Puente, is playful and exuberant as the dancers enter and exit in different combinations, lining up and pairing off. In the second section, a Richard Pryor riff on police violence in black communities introduces a wary duet between Vlach and Pridgen, with music by Branford Marsalis; they circle each other for a long time before touching and rarely relax entirely into each other, even when they depend on the other’s support.

In the final section of the piece, the ensemble fills the stage with buoyant, whirling movement, weaving together the many forms and styles in which Vlach is fluent. The dancers often do different things, and when they do the same thing, it looks different on each body. Yet, even before they form a tight circle in the center of the stage, the way they move together looks unmistakably like unity.

Tresca Weinstein, a freelance writer from Canaan, N.Y., is the Times Union’s dance critic.